Blunt and powerful, Chasing Abbey snatch the tail of the Celtic Tiger, wrestling it into submission.

BRAVE NEW IRISH UPRISING

A name new to me, Chasing Abbey seem to part of a brave new Irish music uprising, allying themselves perhaps closer to Kneecap , or a more house-trained Mary Wallopers, than maybe to the extended Lankum diaspora. So, let’s just say, there’s precious little here that would seem of appeal to lovers of the Clancy Brothers. Probably not even the Dubliners, given John Sheahan’s condemnation of the Mary Wallopers as mediocre. But I digress, as the concentration here is more upon what is than isn’t.

TRAD HOUSE FROM TULLAMORE

Chasing Abbey are the trio of Ronan Bell, Jonathan Byrne and Ted Conway, aka Ro, Bee and Teddy C, childhood chums growing up playing Irish traditional music, in Tullamore. Hitting their teens, the wider outside influences of electronica and dance music seeped into their silo, and they began to fuse the disparate elements. This Irish version of folktronica; acid croft or neo-trad, as their fellow Gaels in Scotland might call it, they call it trad house, and they have been writing, recording, mixing and editing their music for a decade. The odd single and EP have issued forth, attaining gold and platinum status in their home country, with now the rest of the world set to embrace them, with this, their debut long player.

NO PADDYWHACKERY

It is the familiar rotating thrum of tenor banjo that is first heard, over a rocksteady electronic beat. What sounds like mystical and treated chanting repeats “Gorta”, the song’s title. the Irish for hunger, or, in the context here, the famine. Within the unassailable drive of the rhythm a verse appears, vocoded to hypnotic effect: “They feast and dine while the people go hungry, we never forget through our songs and our stories.” A recurring synth drone and Immediately it becomes apparent that there is little or no paddywhackery here ongoing, just the impassioned muscle memory of resentment and of being oppressed. It is an intoxicating and sobering message, some brief captured archival speech adding further weight.

T.A.L follows in similar fashion, the vocal emerging in a staccato torrent of words, somewhere between rap and sprechgesang. T.A. L? Tiocfaidh ár lá, or our day will come, a further uncompromising assault on those taking fiscal advantage of the poor. The banjo and the beats remain ascloseasthis, with a background strum of guitar, possibly bodhran, with the occasional crashing in of electronic sound. Safe to say, radio play is likely to be limited, courtesy the choice of epithets employed. Love it! Íorónta is then closer to a portaireacht, albeit with the rhythmic vocals switching between English and Irish. By now the listener cannot fail to be getting both the hang of the style and the gist of the message, with very little irony expressed: íorónta is Irish for irony, perhaps the only irony here.

GRUFF GRAVEL CONTRASTS

The more traditional sounding Mar Sin sounds not a little like any of Damien Dempsey’s early polemic and drifts dreamily, the gruff gravel of the vocals and banjo swirling into the wash of synths. Deep bass tones squirm into the mix and amplify those contrasts, and it leads well into Scartha, which carries the bearing of a military march, over a Glitterband percussion. “We’re so divided that we can’t even see the greeds got so greedy” shows the thrust remaining largely of righteous protestation. At this point it is worth pointing out that, all the invective aside, it is possible to listen to and enjoy this record purely on the aural qualities, the sounds of the studio and the more organic sounds associated, the timbres of the voices and the sway of the melodies. Sure, the lads would have you consider also the messages contained, but they needn’t overpower.

At roughly the halfway point comes Greedy Pigs, which espouses the titular language barrier, and is perhaps the most instant and commercial track here, a veritable ear worm of rhyming reasoning. Conway comes from a family of butchers, spotting always that one pig who hogs all the swill, unwittingly fast tracking his trip to the abattoir. And that’s íoróntas! Seachain continues the same vibe, a rollicking sideways swagger, this time addressing avoidance and what to. Seachain is to avoid or shun, and nothing to do with any maritime shackle. Culchie is gentler, a tale of proud belonging to a rural Ireland meaning little to any city dwelling neighbours. A delightful song, it takes back the pressure a wee bit, giving a more rounded glaze to the whole.

RHYTHM & REPETITION

If Culchie drums up the trad, Sean Tír dials up the electronica, with a sense of dub almost threatening to bust through the banjo. This extends into the implicit threat of Aris Is Aris, where repetition and rhythm sit tighter than ever in the groove, with the bleak, is it warning or reminder, that “again and again, blood is put on your hands“. Even sung in the Irish Gaelic, it is clearly no lullaby.

A full end of days soundscape fills the intro to Saoirse, Saoirse with a degree of foreboding. We know it as an Irish name, yet this is anything but a love song, one of the more aggressively strident anthems here. I am uncertain how many of the transitions make their way to the physical album format, but, should any doubt linger, YouTube is your friend, most of these songs here being available, along with their lyrics. An odd thought hits as Colonised Minds strikes up, that of a stylistic sonic overlap with Depeche Mode. If the Basildon boys had come from Bantry Bay, would they sound like this? It’s more than the reference to Master and Servant though, these words reversed forming much the target.

A BRISK & BRUSQUE GRAND STATEMENT

Is Red Crua then closes the album with a more complex construct of beats and background, brisk and brusque equally. It makes for a grand statement conclusion. Given the source material of this album is so largely drawn from the same hymn sheet and with the same small palette of sounds utilised throughout, it shouldn’t succeed in somehow sounding so varied. But succeed it does, and I wonder if the band can make a post-Kneecap jump across the Irish Sea into, if not fame and fortune, certainly notoriety. That maybe isn’t their main concern, as an ambitiously titled world tour sees them crossing the length and breadth, currently, of the U.S.A., where, if nowhere else, the North-eastern seaboard will lap them up with relish. They hit the U.K. in November.

Chasing Abbey: Website

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